Archive for category McDonald's

Another corporate bully is messing around with the little guy, or gal in this case. Lauren McClusky of Chicago has a very famous clown at odds with her. McDonald’s is suing her.

Lauren McClusky is a 19 year old musician who like to perform her music and donate all of the proceeds to charities. She has donated $30,000 to the Chicago chapter of Special Olympics and would be willing to donate except she might have to use the money she raised in 2009 to fight McDonald’s who believes that Lauren is infringing on their trademark. Lauren calls her concerts and events McFests and McDonald’s thinks the have the rights to any Mc“Thing” they want.

McDonald’s spokeperson Ashlee Yingling said, “We believe the mark at issue, ‘McFest,’ is similar enough to our brand name and McDonald’s famous family of ‘Mc’ trademarks that it’s likely to cause confusion under trademark standards and/or dilute our valuable trademark rights.”

If you ask me there is no conceivable way anyone in their right mind would construe McFest for anything dealing with McDonald’s food chain. It’s just a McShame, and by the way, don’t tell their lawyers I said McShame or they might come after me!

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B L A C K H I S T O R Y M O N T H N U G G E T O F T H E D A Y

The heat of these horrid places was so great and the odor so offensive that it was quite impossible to enter them, even had there been room. They were measured as above when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck to get air and water. This was opposed by the mate of the slaver, who, from a feeling that they deserved it, declared they would murder them all. The officers, however, persisted, and the poor beings were all turned up together.

It is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption – 517 fellow creatures of all ages and sexes, some children, some adults, some old men and women, all in a state of total nudity, scrambling out together to taste the luxury of a little fresh air and water. They came swarming up like bees from the aperture of a hive till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation front stem to stern, so that it was impossible to imagine where they could all have come from or how they could have been stowed away. On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from light and air; they were lying nearly in a torpid state after the rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death, and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand.

Excerpt from Reverend Robert Walsh served aboard one of the ships assigned to intercept the slavers off the African coast. This is some of what he witnessed on the morning of May 22, 1829